


if it weren't for your wings I'd be gone

by krinka



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Touko needs a backstory so I'm giving her one, natsume's friends love him, the fujiwaras are good parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 03:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19433389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krinka/pseuds/krinka
Summary: When Shigeru and Takashi return, the entrance hall is lined with photograph after photograph.Touko sees Takashi freeze like a deer caught in headlights. For a split second, she fears it’s too much, fears that he might bolt right out the door.Because there, on the wall, are pictures of him.-or: Most family's have family albums. Touko decides to have a family wall, for all the world to see.natsume week 2k19day 1: monochrome/color





	if it weren't for your wings I'd be gone

“These are all Shigeru’s” Touko says “These are his parents, and his grandparents and great grandparents. There aren’t any of my own family, since we were rather poor even before the war.”

They are sitting at the kitchen table, going over an old family album they found while cleaning the house. Takashi looks at her with kind, longing eyes as she says this.

Touko smiles at him reassuringly. “I knew most of them.” she tells him. “My father died when I was young, and I had lots of younger siblings and I didn’t want to be a burden to my mother. I became apprenticed to his grandmother as a seamstress when I was fifteen, and they became my second family. I’m glad to have something of them.” Takashi is still looking at her, at times uncertain, at times curious, and at times sad. He doesn’t ask about her own family, which Touko is glad for.

“Here.” she offers, handing him a photo of Fujiwara Daisuke’s tailor shop while she works up the courage to ask if he has any photos of his own family. She knows he must have some, picked up weeks ago from the now-demolished house he used to live in when his parents were alive. Takashi is too absorbed in the picture before him to notice her hesitancy. He looks at the people staring up at him from the photograph – the tailor and his wife, their children, a young Shigeru and an even younger Touko. Takashi’s fingers skim the crumpled edges of the photographs, trace the faces of Fujiwaras past, and wonders if they were as kind as the ones of the present. What would they think of this interloper in their house, this changling child, borne of and raised by ghosts?

Touko watches as Takashi’s eyes grow distant, as the movement of his fingers grows from careful reverence to caring, absent-mindedness, and finally asks the question.

(Finally, she asks him.)

* * *

Takashi says yes, of course, with a lot of gentle plying and even gentler assurances that the crumpled picture of his parents, their arms laden with a small toddler, is welcome in their family album.

(Touko does not tell him that she plans to have the picture framed and nailed to the wall, for all the world to see that Natsume Takashi is loved.)

* * *

Touko wakes early two days later, not by design but because of her own excitement. It is still dark out, but this doesn’t deter her from slipping silently out of hers and Shigeru’s bedroom and heading down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of morning tea. Then, she waits.

Nishimura stops by at the break of dawn, practically bouncing his way up the garden path. She smiles at him, offers him tea, asks if he’ll stay for breakfast.

Nishimura shakes his head, and the smile that may very well split his face grows impossibly wider. “This won’t be a surprise if Natsume grows suspicious, and everyone put so much effort to gather these that it would be really disappointing if he figured us out. Plus Kitamoto would skin me, but that’s nothing new.”

He hands her two full boxes and turns to go, but before he leaves Touko hears him mutter to himself excitedly “What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall…” and feels her heart ease.

(Touko feels slightly uneasy for going behind Takashi’s back but she knows, if she had asked Takashi for pictures of him with his friends he would have become flustered, would have been hesitant to give her anything, would have stared at the few pictures he did give her – hanging there, among the grays and monochromes of old, bright and awkward, as if unsure whether they belonged there. Tentatively hoping that they did. Touko won’t settle for that. She needs Takashi to realize that he does belong here.)

* * *

The culmination of Touko making subtle hints that Shigeru should spend his day off with Takashi is this: her, hammer in hand, banging against a wall for two hours straight while Shigeru treats Takashi to tea and home-made sweets a few towns over, where an old childhood friend of his has opened up a confectionary. (Touko suspects this is because Shigeru wants to show off, to brag about his adopted son, as is his wont – but, well, this is the first time he’d do it with Takashi there to witness it.)

* * *

When Shigeru and Takashi return, the entrance hall is lined with photograph after photograph.

Touko sees Takashi freeze like a deer caught in headlights. For a split second, she fears it’s too much, fears that he might bolt right out the door.

Because there, on the wall, are pictures of _him_.

Sleeping in his parents arms. Dozing with Nyanko-sensei in the garden. Atop a bike beside Nishimura and Kitamoto. Huddled over homework with Kitamoto and Tanuma after he missed school again. Nestled between Tanuma and Taki on the floorboards of a sunlit porch, Nyanko-sensei sprawled over their laps, their faces ranging from surprise to irritation to delight. Standing by Natori’s side with the actor’s arm around his back and a rare, genuine smile on his face, Taki and Nishimura bouncing excitedly in the background. Surrounded on all sides by warm people, by Tanuma and Taki, Nishimura and Kitamoto, Ogata and Shibata, Nyanko-sensei a steading weight on his shoulder.

That one, almost-formal picture of the three of them – of Takashi, Shigeru and Touko standing together in front of their home.

Takashi doesn’t even realize he’s crying until Shigeru puts a hand on his shoulder. Takashi looks so surprised by the gesture that Touko’s heart aches and so she pulls them both into a hug before Takashi can apologize for any of this and tells him she’s so glad to have both of them in her life. Takashi lets out a little breathless laugh, more a hiccup than anything else. He shakes between her and Shigeru, but doesn’t fall apart.

Nyanko-sensei watches on, pleased.

**Author's Note:**

> so realizing that today is the first day of natsume week 2k19 managed to pull me out of a minor writer's block. been years since I've watched this show and it still owns me.


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